Light a Penny Candle

by Maeve Binchy

  She called first at the chemist and spoke to Mr Moriarty. She made her voice light and cheerful, she showed him her commercial college certificates, she thought she would enquire around some of the nicer places in town, she said. The Moriartys said that there was hardly any work that they and the young man who worked there couldn’t do. She went to the insurance broker, the solicitor and the jeweller’s. None of them needed anyone. They all complimented Aisling on how well she looked and said she was a sensible girl to want to work in her own town, and that something would turn up. The bank she knew didn’t hire people from the town; they had to come from far away so that they wouldn’t know people’s business and gossip about it. The hotel had a receptionist, the two doctors had receptionists. The grain merchants were Protestants, and it would be too common to work anywhere else. Weary and depressed she came into the shop ten minutes before closing time.

  ‘Mam can I have a word with you up in the eyrie,’ she called.

  ‘What is it?’ Eileen lifted her glasses to see Aisling properly. She saw a tired and disappointed-looking child, very different from the bouncy figure who had set out just after lunch. ‘Come on up here,’ she called.

  Aisling made the little flight of stairs and flopped on to a stool.

  ‘Mam, I’ve been thinking,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, and what have you thought?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking that you’d be nearing the end of your work here.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes, a woman of nearly fifty as you were saying. …’

  ‘A woman of forty-eight so I am.

  ‘Yes, but I’m a woman of eighteen and honestly, if this place is ever to be a success, the whole family had better try to pull together you know and. …’

  ‘Oh I see. …’

  ‘No, you don’t, you work too hard, everyone says so. When anyone says to you why don’t you get someone to help, you always list the problems. Why can’t I do it Mam? I’m trained, I have all my certificates … what do you think Mam?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit sudden, child, I mean you never wanted to help out here when we were busy, or you never thought of working here before, so far as your father and I ever thought anyway. …’

  ‘I didn’t want to help out, Mam, that’s the whole point. I wanted to work like a real person. You know, hours and wages and pulling my weight … you know?’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to talk to your father … it’s a bit of a surprise.’

  ‘Sure, Da will do what you say Mam, you know he will.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort. This is your father’s business, he’s very particular about who he hires. Maybe he might think you’d be a bit. …’

  ‘A bit what, Mam?’

  ‘Well, young.’

  ‘You mean flighty,’ said Aisling mulishly.

  ‘Yes, I mean flighty,’ said Mam, simply.

  ‘I’m not flighty any more, not if I’m getting a real salary, and could be sacked and all,’ Aisling said.

  ‘You changed your mind about Murray’s, then?’ Mam asked quietly.

  ‘Oh yes, I went and had a chat, it was more of a chat, not a normal interview. Tony Murray and I agreed it wasn’t such a great idea. …’

  ‘And you wouldn’t rather work, say in the hotel or the chemist where you’d meet more people …?’ Mam was gentle.

  ‘No, the Moriartys would only have a living for themselves and the hotel has Judy Lynch.’

  ‘And the insurance, or the bank …?’

  ‘No, they have their own people. Now what I had in mind was building up this place, Mam, like a real big family business. You know, you and Da and Eamonn and myself all talking about the future, and maybe when Donal gets older, some not too tiring job for him. …’

  Mam was smiling. She seemed to find something funny.

  ‘Well, it’s what people do,’ Aisling said crossly.

  Mam reached over and took her hand. ‘And what about Niamh, will we find her a job in this new enlarged family business?’

  ‘I think Niamh had better marry some money and get us the cash to expand. Build on out the back,’ said Aisling.

  ‘I’ll suggest it to her at supper,’ said Mam.

  Aisling snatched back her hand. ‘You’re not taking me seriously,’ she snapped.

  ‘I am, child, I am indeed… I’ll have a word with your Da. If he says yes, when would you like to start?’

  Aisling threw her arms around Eileen, knocking off the glasses which had been perched on her forehead. ‘On Monday, Mam, and could I not have to wear a shop-coat like you. Could I wear my own clothes?’

  ‘They’d get very dirty, love, that’s why we all wear coats, the dust.’

  ‘But Mam, I’d keep my clothes clean, I promise.’

  ‘They’d be destroyed, you’d spend your whole salary replacing them. I’m telling you from experience. We’ll get you a nice shop-coat, whatever colour you like.’

  ‘But Mam, it doesn’t look right, not after all that course and learning all the shorthand and the rest. A shop-coat.’

  ‘You’d look beautiful in green; suppose we got you a couple of emerald green coats to wear over your clothes?’

  ‘Would it look. …?’

  ‘It would look unusual, special, you’d be the most eye-catching woman in Kilgarret. You’re a beautiful-looking girl, Aisling.’

  Aisling didn’t know what to say.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, go on, Mam,’ she said eventually.

  ‘You are. Don’t you know it? With all the titivating you do on yourself?’

  ‘Am I nice-looking?’ Aisling asked shyly.

  ‘You’re lovely, far too good for that Ned Barrett, but that’s your own choice, I suppose.’

  ‘Mam, how on earth do you know about Ned Barrett?’ Aisling was stunned. ‘Not that there’s anything to know,’ she added quickly.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Mam. ‘But when you’re nearly fifty like me you have to go round imagining things … it passes the time.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to be one of those people who get seriously interested in men. I really don’t.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re right, Aisling, one has a feeling about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘Yes love.’

  ‘If Da says yes, can people call me Miss O’Connor, can some people call me Miss O’Connor anyway?’

  ‘I’ll insist on it … from the start.’

  Johnny Stone said that he would be very happy to take Elizabeth up to Preston. He was going to make a journey into the dark north for Mr Worsky anyway with the van, so why not have Elizabeth along for company? She could make calls with him, learn a bit more about the real and the fake, the kind of things that were beautiful and things that only looked good. What did Mr Worsky think?

  Mr Worsky thought it was up to Elizabeth and her father. If they had no objection, then he would be delighted of course. To have two staff on the road for him was coming up in the world. He did not foresee any awkward entanglement, where the little solemn face of Elizabeth might become hurt and bewildered. The child was grown-up beyond her years already. She could handle a Romeo like Mr Johnny Stone.

  Elizabeth did not discuss her transport with Father. She simply told him that she would use the half-term break from college to pay Mother the long-promised visit. Harry had sent money for her; no, she did not need anything extra, just the normal allowance was fine. She carefully arranged that the first night of her absence, Father’s meal would be there. But after that for five days he would have to manage on his own. Then he might appreciate more how smoothly and efficiently she ran his house. She also left that week’s housekeeping money for him in an envelope, knowing that it would not stretch in any way to meet his needs. She did not think that this was cruel. She thought it was sensible. Father was living a strange life between the bank and the bridge table, far far away from reality. It would be no harm to bring him down to a few basics.

  Dearest Elizabeth,


  Harry and I are so pleased, so very pleased that you are really coming. I wake up every morning and I say to myself it’s only nine more days now. Harry wanted to know whether it was like this during the war, whether I counted all the days when you were in Ireland? I don’t think it was the same. I knew you were safe and well and happy. I read those letters every week and I couldn’t think what to write back, there was so little to say about our empty house and about the long, weary hours in the munitions factory.

  Here it’s different. I think of you at home in Clarence Gardens. I think of the kitchen, and of your father … I can’t imagine what it’s like for you there now. I wish … in a foolish sort of way that I was there, because you and I could talk. You could tell me all about Mr Worsky’s shop, and I could go in and see it; I am sure that George doesn’t even know where it is. At least I did buy some fire irons there once.

  I hope you like our place. Harry has worked until after midnight for over two weeks ‘to have things right for Elizabeth’. I don’t think I’m telling you this so that you will be prepared to make a lot of admiring noises. But perhaps I am. We never made many admiring noises when you were younger, and I remember that week when you came back from Kilgarret you said that everyone reacted more in the O’Connors’ house and in school. I’m just rambling on darling.

  Only eight and a half days.

  Love,

  Violet

  ‘Why does she call herself Violet?’ Johnny Stone asked Elizabeth the day they set off. It was to be a two-day journey.

  ‘When she went away with Harry she started signing Violet. It’s funny but it seemed quite right somehow. I suppose she thought that if she wasn’t doing the job of being mother, then she shouldn’t call herself Mother.’

  ‘My mother never did the job of being mother but she still calls herself that: ever your loving mother. I think I’ll have to tell her that she should call herself Martha. You’re younger than I am, I’ll use you as an example. Listen, Martha old bean, I’ll say, my friend Elizabeth’s only eighteen and she and her mother use first names. The world’s changing, old dear, I’ll say.’

  Elizabeth laughed. ‘It’s not as easy as that. I still think of her as Mother. I’m going to feel out the ground a bit when I meet her. She may like to be called Mother still. She may prefer not. I cheat in letters you see. Dear Both. I worked it out, it was affectionate but not specific if you see.’

  Johnny saw. The signposts flashed by, the miles disappeared under the wheels of the old van. Elizabeth unpacked a picnic which they had to eat in the car, since April torrents and winds were howling around them.

  They had two calls to make that day. Johnny and Elizabeth crawled around a disused summer-house and collected forty old pictures, some cracked, some so gaudy that Elizabeth couldn’t see for the life of her what Mr Worsky would do with them. The frames, you silly,’ hissed Johnny as they pulled wicker chairs and old cricket bats and croquet mallets out in their search.

  The lady who owned the frames, and the summerhouse, offered them tea and biscuits and was overjoyed at the small sum that Johnny gave her. Before they left she asked Johnny whether his young lady would like to use the bathroom. Elizabeth flushed, not at the mention of bathrooms but at the woman’s mistaking her for Johnny’s young lady.

  ‘She’s more my colleague than my young lady.’ Johnny grinned. ‘But seeing you blush like that, Elizabeth, maybe I’ll change my mind.’

  Elizabeth fled to the bathroom and tried to hide her red cheeks by rubbing in some of the talcum powder that was beside the handbasin.

  Back in the van she launched an immediate attack.

  ‘If those are really mahogany and really silver frames, you didn’t give her nearly enough,’ she complained.

  ‘Dear girl. She was delighted with what we gave her. Delighted. She pressed my hand in thanks, she’s going to have the roof mended. She’s going to ask the local handyman to come in and paint her living room. Now is that happy or not happy? What do you want me to do, throw poor Stefan’s money down the drain…?’

  ‘But Mr Worsky wouldn’t want to cheat. …’

  ‘Seriously Elizabeth, that woman had those pictures rotting in her tool shed or whatever it was for years. Her husband had always meant to clean up. He never did. He never came back from the war either. Now what happens? We come down, we spend two hours cleaning up, tidying her old shed. You got a broom for heaven’s sake. She has a tidy place to put her deck-chair, if it’s ever going to stop raining in the next few years, she’s got cash in hand to have a new roof, a new-coloured sitting room and a new hat. Now what’s that but happiness?’

  ‘It’s tricking her. We’ll get thirty or forty times what you paid. You gave her thirty-three pounds. The big gilt frame alone will fetch that. More even, if we do it up. And there’s twenty-nine others. It’s downright dishonest!’

  ‘It’s business, you stupid girl, and you look terrific when your face is all red like that. It’s really peaches and cream. Typical English rose, you should do it more often.’

  ‘Does it really look nice, or is that a cruel joke?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘Of course it’s nice, whole fortunes are spent by women trying to get their faces to look like that,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I was afraid it looked a bit consumptive, you know, too much contrast,’ Elizabeth said seriously.

  Johnny laughed so much he had to pull the van up on the side of the road. ‘You are totally beautiful,’ he said affectionately, ‘I wish the old bird back there was right and you were my young lady.’

  ‘I’d be no good at being someone’s young lady, I’m not ready for it yet. Life’s too complicated, there are too many things to sort out.’ Elizabeth was utterly sincere. There was no way that she was hoping to be contradicted.

  ‘When do you imagine things will be sorted out?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘I expect when I’ve finished college and get a job, and when Father’s learned to live on his own, or have a housekeeper or something … about three years I expect.’

  ‘I’ll have to come and apply to be your young man then,’ Johnny said. ‘If I’m not too old that is … I’ll be nearly a quarter of a century.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth consideredly. ‘You’ll probably have given up playing around by then. But I expect I’ll find somebody.’

  They stayed in the guesthouse that was owned by Mr Worsky’s cousin outside Liverpool. The second call had been equally contentious. Johnny had offered an old man twenty pounds for three mirrors and a table. According to Elizabeth they would fetch over one hundred pounds in the shop. Johnny had walked down the steps to the van with her before he clinched the deal. The little old man peered anxiously out the window, terrified they would leave without buying the pieces.

  ‘Once again, Stefan Worsky pays for a shop, he pays me a salary, he pays you something, he puts the petrol in the bloody van, he pays for me to stay with his cousin, he spends hours of his time and his skill – don’t forget his skill and training, which took years to come by – in doing up these tables and mirrors. Then, and only then, will he get one hundred pounds for them. Now that’s what the world calls business. It’s not a well-kept secret. It’s what people know happens. Have I your permission to offer this poor bugger twenty pounds before he has a heart attack, or should we cancel the whole thing, break his heart, mine and Stefan’s just because Madam White here thinks she knows how to run the world?’

  Elizabeth burst into tears. Johnny paid the perplexed man twenty-five pounds instead of the twenty he had been quite willing to accept. In confusion, they bundled the furniture into the van while Elizabeth sobbed in the front seat. In silence they headed for Mr Worsky’s cousin’s house.

  ‘Do you think we might have a half pint somewhere while the storms abate?’ Johnny asked. It was the first thing he had said in eleven miles. Elizabeth nodded. She wasn’t able to speak.

  They sat in a pub and, red-eyed, she drank a brandy and ginger wine which Johnny said might be just t
he thing. He made no attempt to cheer her up, to apologise for his loss of temper or to enquire why she cried so long and so deeply.

  The brandy warmed her and she had another.

  Then, in a small voice, she asked him about Liverpool. Was it a big place, suppose she wanted to find a small place called Jubilee Terrace, would that be possible? Was it idiotic? During her second brandy she told Johnny about Sean O’Connor and how Aunt Eileen had always said that if ever she got anywhere near Liverpool, could she say hallo to Amy Sparks. It was such ages ago, five years. Of course, Mrs Amy Sparks and her son Gerry might be dead. But just because Aunt Eileen had once said … no, it was silly. Johnny mustn’t listen to her, she was just being silly.

  ‘We’re far too early for Stefan’s cousin, why don’t we see if we can find it?’ said Johnny.

  Gerry Sparks had had a stroke of luck, he said, in that he was good with his hands. He was a watchmaker and he could do a lot of work at home. They fixed a tray on his wheelchair, and he could spread all the bits and bobs out on it and look through his magnifying glass at them. It was a real bit of luck that they discovered his skill in the therapy classes, because the legs hadn’t taken. Not enough for them to grab on to, didn’t manage to use the muscles from the hips.

  Mrs Sparks was now Mrs Benson. She had remarried, as a sensible thing to do; she was able to look after Mr Benson, and cook his meals, keep his shirts nice and clean, he could give her his pension. They had sold his little house and made a tidy profit. They were so pleased to meet Elizabeth and her young man; they knew all about her. Eileen O’Connor, a wonderful woman, wrote a long letter every Christmas and she sent money to the church in Liverpool where they had held this mass for Sean.

  They talked about Sean. Gerry said he had been a great mate, he’d never had a mate like Sean before. Elizabeth said he had always been restless when she knew him in Kilgarret. But then she was very young and maybe she hadn’t really been able to talk to him.

  ‘I never knew a mate like him,’ Gerry Sparks said again. ‘Certainly never knew one since then.’